


To (Sweetly) Hold

by apollonious



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dancing, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Needs a Hug, New Berk (How to Train Your Dragon), Post-Canon, Pregnant Astrid Hofferson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonious/pseuds/apollonious
Summary: Hiccup and Astrid work through painful memories by dancing to an old song in their living room.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Astrid Hofferson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 83





	To (Sweetly) Hold

**Author's Note:**

> Here's another of those “Let’s Explore That Trauma” things that canon never really indicates happened, but the idea wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it.

Outside, the snow was coming down quickly, covering New Berk in a dusting that showed all the signs of becoming the year’s biggest snowfall yet. By morning, it would be forming drifts against the walls of houses and swathing the roofs in a thick white blanket. It wasn’t too long before Snoggletog, the second since New Berk’s founding.

Astrid sighed happily as she settled into her chair in front of the fire, glad to be inside and out of the cold. Hiccup wasn’t so lucky—an emergency requiring the Chief’s attention had arisen when they were halfway through doing the washing-up after dinner. Eret had shot Astrid a half-apologetic look over Hiccup’s shoulder as the two men stood talking in the doorway, but Astrid couldn’t be upset. She’d known what she was getting into when she married Hiccup, and having him as her husband was well worth dealing with his duties as Chief. He’d kissed her, tenderly enough to stain Eret’s cheeks pink, and told her to get off her feet before he left, but naturally she’d finished the dishes before following his orders.

Now she smoothed a hand over the cause for Hiccup’s concern, a firm little bump just starting to show as it poked out of her belly. It was still too soon to tell New Berk about their impending Heir, so only Valka and Gothi knew. Well, and Eret, but that was mainly so he could help with her duties leading the New Berk Guard once the advanced stages of pregnancy made it harder for her to keep up with them. 

“I’ll have him back as soon as I can,” Eret had said, only a glance toward her abdomen betraying the fact that he knew. He wasn’t treating her any differently, which she was glad for. Being pregnant was a big enough change without her second-in-command suddenly deciding she was delicate. 

Astrid bent down and picked up her knitting from the basket where she kept it while she wasn’t working on it. She’d taken up the hobby when she first realized she was pregnant, only a few weeks ago, wanting to make a blanket for the baby. Valka, having been a serviceable knitter before her disappearance, had walked her through the basics of casting on and helped her through the first few rows, which had admittedly been rather rough. Looking at it now, she could actually see her slow progression into some level of skill. It still didn’t look particularly good—the tension was uneven in a lot of places, and it had more lumps than a Gronckle’s hide—but it was definitely better.

Astrid was naturally good at most things she tried; she’d picked up fighting and battle tactics and even dragon riding quickly, and so it was frustrating to her that with knitting, she was having to take more time to even approach competence than she had with almost anything else. It just didn’t make sense that _yarn_ was giving her more trouble than dragons ever had, but she’d decided to learn this, and so she was going to.

She was not going to let _knitting,_ of all things, beat her.

As she worked, her needles clicking together slowly formed a sort of rhythm, and just as slowly, Astrid realized she was humming to herself. It was an old song, one she’d known as long as she could remember, and she’d heard it countless times, at festivals, in her own home as her parents sang it to each other, and at weddings. Especially weddings.

Not hers, though.

It was only a few weeks after Hiccup’s father died that he had presided over his first wedding as Chief. The day had been going well, with lots of food and music and seemingly enough mead to drain a Bewilderbeast. The atmosphere in the Mead Hall had been as joyous as she’d ever felt it. She and Hiccup had danced more than once, and it was as they were returning to their table to get a drink for their parched throats that the first notes of “For The Dancing And The Dreaming” had floated out over the crowd. 

At once, Hiccup had tensed beside her, and she’d looked over, alarmed, to see him wide-eyed and suddenly pale. When she squeezed his hand, he squeezed back and met her gaze with a tight smile. As soon as the song ended, though, he’d slipped away, leaving Astrid to preside over the rest of the evening, with, fortunately, all of his official duties already fulfilled. 

When she’d found him in his house, sitting on the steps, the first thing he’d said had been, “I’m sorry.” He’d clearly been crying, and he was far past the level of merrily tipsy that he usually kept to for weddings and festivals. She’d never seen him like that before, and hadn’t since then, but as he explained, telling her about how he’d watched his parents reunite, dancing to that song, only minutes before his father had been killed, she’d started to understand. For her, having spent her whole life listening to her parents sing it to each other, watching them dance as it was played at festivals, the song was a reminder of love, of stability, and of home, but for him, the only time it had ever been personal was right before Stoick’s death. 

For him, it was a reminder of death. 

He’d started crying again as he told her, and she’d held him, feeling the way he was shaking in her arms and wishing more than anything that she could somehow take away the panic that had gripped him when he’d heard the music and the pain he was feeling now.

In the weddings since, he’d held out through the song, teeth clenched, while trying not to let anyone but Astrid see his tension. He hadn’t said anything when the time came to start preparing for their own wedding, but there had been a certain set to his shoulders, a certain look in his eyes, that had made Astrid speak up. Yes, “For The Dancing And The Dreaming” was traditional, but there were plenty of other songs they could dance to, and that other couples could join them for. And besides, Hiccup already defied tradition as the first Chief of Berk who’d ascended to the station on dragonback. He was anything but traditional, and neither was Astrid.

And so they didn’t have it at the wedding.

Despite her justifications, and the fact that, on a conscious level, she really didn’t mind, Astrid had felt her heart clench as the song’s usual time had rolled around and it hadn’t played. And from the way Valka’s eyes shimmered, she seemed to understand too. Astrid and Hiccup still danced, of course, still clasped their hands and did all the traditional steps, but not to that song.

They hadn’t at the weddings since then either.

Now, sitting in her chair in front of the fire, Astrid realized she’d been staring into the flames. She blinked, swallowing hard, and looked back down at the blanket she was making. With a sigh, she started again at the beginning of the song, singing some of the words and humming others—not because she didn’t know the song, she knew it as well as her own name, but at times she found herself needing to focus on the stitching too much to sing:

_I’ll hmm-hm-hmm on savage seas,  
With ne’er a fear of hmm-mm,  
Hmm-hm-hm-hm!_

—her yarn knotted, and she had to pause to untangle it—

_the waves of life,  
If you will marry me.  
No scorching sun, nor hmm-mm cold,  
Will hmm-hm-hm my journey,  
Hmm-hmm will promise me your heart,  
And love—_

She stopped with a sharp intake of breath, whirling in her chair to look up at the person who had crept up behind her, pressing a slightly scratchy and utterly familiar kiss to her cheek.

It was Hiccup, looking down at her with a smile that was tinged with sadness around the edges.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he shocked her by continuing the song:

_And love me for eternity._

“Babe, you don’t have to do this,” she said, but then he was gently tugging her knitting out of her hands and laying it in its basket, and pulling her to her feet. He raised one hand, inviting her to do the same, and grinned when she crossed his forearm with her own, wordlessly accepting his invitation to dance.

He still had snowflakes in his hair, glittering in the firelight and giving her a glimpse of what he might actually look like once he’d earned those white hairs, sometime far in their future.

He carried on, singing the part usually performed by the woman:

_My dearest one, my darling dear,  
Your mighty words astound me.  
But I’ve no need of mighty deeds  
When I feel your arms around me._

His voice didn’t have the practiced grace of some of the people of New Berk—it was still his voice, after all—but nonetheless, Astrid found that, just as she loved his voice, she rather loved hearing him sing. It must have been years, she thought, since the last time. They laughed as they sang through the next verses of the song, Hiccup rebuffing Astrid’s offers of golden rings and poetry, and as Astrid sang out _I only want you near me!_ she saw Hiccup’s eyes flash with what she thought must be joy. 

They sang the last verses in unison, and Hiccup surprised her still further when, on the very last drawn-out note of _marry me!,_ he grasped her firmly about the waist and lifted her, twirling her once around before setting her gently back on her feet.

She’d instinctively braced her hands on his shoulders as he picked her up, and now she found herself with her arms around his neck, both of them dissolving into giggles as he kissed her cheek again, wrapping his arms around her. 

“Babe?” she asked after a moment of relishing the feeling of him holding her. She pulled back a little, looking up into his face. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, though there was still pain in his expression. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. I just—I heard you singing, and it made me realize how lucky I am to be here with you, and to have the kind of future that we’ve got in front of us.” One of his hands slipped down from her back and across her ribs to splay against her stomach. “And I realized, with that song, I can’t keep living in the past.”

“It’s just a song, Hiccup. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“I know.” He smiled again. “But it doesn’t hurt anymore. At least, not like it used to. It’s okay,” he said after a moment, and she felt her lips melt into a smile. “But—thank you, Astrid.”

He could be thanking her for any number of things—for not pushing it, for getting them out of having to sing it at their wedding, even just for sitting and listening to him as he’d told her what had happened on that night years ago. Maybe all of it. And as Astrid met his deep green eyes, so warm and so impossibly soft, she felt whatever hurt she’d felt at not having sung it at their wedding slip away and dissolve into nothing.

She reached down and took the hand he’d placed on her belly, lacing her fingers through his. She kissed the back of his hand. “To have and kiss?”

Smiling despite the tears that were threatening to leak from his eyes—and now, Astrid realized to her dismay, she felt prickling in her eyes too—Hiccup nodded.

“To sweetly hold,” he said, before pulling her into a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it.


End file.
